James Fowler, Novo Construction CEO

Meet the Boss By Suzanne Herel

Jim Fowler, co-founder and president of NOVA Construction, sits for a portrait in his offices on Wednesday Oct. 6, 2010 in San Francisco, Calif.

Jim Fowler, co-founder and president of NOVA Construction, sits for a portrait in his offices on Wednesday Oct. 6, 2010 in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Jim Fowler, co-founder and president of NOVA Construction, sits for a portrait in his offices on Wednesday Oct. 6, 2010 in San Francisco, Calif.

Jim Fowler, co-founder and president of NOVA Construction, sits for a portrait in his offices on Wednesday Oct. 6, 2010 in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

James Fowler, Novo Construction CEO

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James Fowler picked a fine time to start a construction business: March of 2000, the month the dot-com bubble burst.

The CEO of Novo Construction recalls sitting at a folding table in his first office with co-founder Robert Williamson, waiting for the phone to ring. It didn't.

"Robert and I pretty much played golf every day for the first month or two," he said with a laugh. "There was nothing to do."

Their first job came from a friend's referral - an order to hang a white board in the office of a Silicon Valley CEO.

"Rob and I got into my Honda Accord and stopped by Orchard Supply - I didn't even have any tools at the time," Fowler said.

Now 10 years later, Novo - Latin for "revive, refresh and build anew" - is one of the Bay Area's top 10 largest commercial construction companies.

In 2008, the private company earned roughly $188 million in revenues, Fowler said.

The past two years, however, have been the toughest ones he's seen. He expects to end 2010 with revenues of $120 million.

Fowler has construction in his blood: He was introduced to the trade by his father, whose own father was in construction as well.

Fowler's father was American; his mother is Chinese, and he spent his early years in Hong Kong with his younger sister.

When he was about 8 years old, his father moved their family - along with an aunt and uncle, five cousins and a grandmother - to Redwood City, with the thought that the kids would get a better education in the United States. There, they lived in the same house.

"He would take me to job sites every summer, not only to show me what hard work was, but to make sure that I valued education," Fowler said.

In particular, Fowler recalls an Orchard Supply that his father was building in Watsonville when Fowler was a teen. "He had me sweep the warehouse, which was probably 60,000 square feet, sweep one side of it to the other end."

When he was done, his father made him sweep it back to the other side.

"Then he asked me, 'Did you learn anything?' And I said, 'Yeah, I don't want to sweep anymore, and I want to be able to sit down when I want to sit down.'

"He says, 'If you want to do that, you're going to have to learn to use your brain and not your muscle. The only way for you to do that is to stay in school.' That is probably what drove me, to make sure I got into college."

"Ever since, we've been together in one form or another - living together, being best friends," Fowler said. "We always talked about starting our own business."

In 2000, they did just that: emptied their savings of about $60,000 each, pooled the money and started the company, which now has its headquarters in Menlo Park and an office in San Francisco. It employs about 100 people.

While Novo has done everything from hang that first white board to construct buildings, at its heart it serves as in-house contractors for companies such as Apple, Cisco, Sandisk and Oracle.

Its motto is, "Building rock solid relationships."

"It's not so much what the company is but the people who are in it that creates the repeat business," Fowler said.

While the past two years have been rough going, the company made it a priority to keep its staffing up, while many others were laying people off.

"Our focus was making sure we kept our good teams, good people in place," he said. "We keep the people we know are long-term assets because those are things you can't get back when times are good."

Fowler's father, now deceased, also taught him one of his favorite pastimes: piloting small aircraft.